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Teamwork without a Team Charter is pure gambling

A Team Charter at your kick-off makes sure you align your expectations for how to work together…

Strategies for giving your team the best conditions to succeed.

Search for kick-off online and you’ll find a wealth of guides and articles on the subject. But they often miss the most important part — a team contract, what I call a Team Charter. It makes sure you align your expectations for how you’re going to work together. Do that, and you can expect good teamwork. Don’t, and you’re effectively gambling with your task or your project. You might reach the finish line without a Team Charter — and then again, you might not. In this article I describe what a Team Charter consists of, how it works, and why you can’t do without it.

This is my second article in the guide to how you, as a leader, give your team the best conditions to succeed. The guide is built on the so-called 60/30/10 rule for teams. The rule, formulated by the renowned Harvard professor Richard Hackman, says that 90% of a team’s fate is decided before the work itself even begins. Below, you can see why.

What has the biggest influence on a team’s results? (Hackman, 2011)

An example of a conversation I’ve had with many teams that are stuck:

Question: “How is your teamwork going?”
Answer: “A lot of it has gone really badly.”
Question: “Why?”
Answer: “There are different interests and different views on the equipment.”
Question: “In terms of how it should be used?”
Answer: “Yes — both in terms of use, but also in terms of maintenance.”
Question: “Did you start your teamwork by talking about routines, or did you make some kind of work plan?”
Answer: “No. I thought we had, but we hadn’t. Then one of the members left the team, and that’s when things really started to slide.”

If you want to avoid ending up in a similar situation, where expectations aren’t aligned, then make a Team Charter.

Of the self-managing teams that don’t reach their goals, 60% of the time it’s because they didn’t invest time in the basics from the start.

What is a Team Charter?

A Team Charter is a document in which the team formalises agreements about, among other things, the team’s mission, vision, goals and norms (Mathieu, 2009). It’s relevant for all teams, but especially important for new teams, or when an existing team gets new members.

The advantage of a Team Charter is that it builds trust between the parties from the start. When trust is maintained despite the team running into conflicts, those conflicts tend to stay task-related rather than person-related. Task-related conflicts often end as creative problem-solving and positive outcomes — unlike the person-related ones.

A Team Charter is a document in which the team formalises agreements about, among other things, the team’s mission, vision, goals and norms.

A foundation for good teamwork

Even though research into the Team Charter is still new, it’s clear that a Team Charter makes a real difference to teamwork. For example, it’s estimated that of the self-managing teams that don’t reach their goals, 60% of the time it’s because they didn’t invest time in the basics from the start (Mathieu, 2009). The Team Charter plays a key part in those basics, as the experiments below show.

In Norway, an experiment was run with 12 teams in farming, where each team had 2 to 5 people (Sverdrup, 2015). Six teams had drawn up a Team Charter, and six hadn’t. Each team’s performance was assessed partly on how many litres of milk their cows produced, and on the quality of the milk. The result was crystal clear: every team that had drawn up a Team Charter had good teamwork. None of the others had good teamwork. On performance, four out of six teams with a Team Charter were “high performance”. Of the six teams without a Team Charter, only one was “high performance”, while the rest were “low performance”.

In another study, 60 American university students took part (Aaron, 2014). The students were divided into small teams that had to draw up a business plan over a semester — a complex task that required everyone’s participation. The group was split in two: 29 students were trained in completing and using a Team Charter, and 31 students did the same task without one. After the semester, both groups evaluated their teamwork, and there was a striking difference between those who had used and been trained in a Team Charter and those who hadn’t. In the table below, you can see that every measure of teamwork was around 20% higher compared with the group that didn’t use a Team Charter.

Measures	Average rating from students without a Team Charter (31 students)	Average rating from students with a Team Charter and training in completing and using it (29 students)	Improvement in percent thanks to the Team Charter
Effort	2,976	3,845	29 %
Belonging	3,258	4,103	26 %
Communication	3,484	4,352	25 %
Happiness at work	3,626	4,431	22 %
Mutual help	3,653	4,379	20 %

Source: Aaron, 2014

In a larger study of 239 project teams at another American university, a similar effect of a Team Charter was found (Courtright, 2017). Here, the conclusion was that the reason for the improvements in teamwork and the students’ performance was that their Team Charter raised the level of a sense of responsibility.

Every team that had drawn up a Team Charter had good teamwork. None of the others had good teamwork.

A Team Charter binds the team together

The reason a Team Charter makes such a big difference is that it expands and formalises the team’s psychological contract. A psychological contract is each team member’s expectation of mutual obligations (Laulié, 2016). When a team draws up a Team Charter, these mutual expectations are made visible and aligned. That’s a major advantage, since a psychological contract is typically unspoken and often only surfaces when it’s broken.

It’s these mutual expectations of one another that bind the team together. That is, if a team member does something really good for the team, the glue is the expectation of recognition from colleagues or the leader being met. It’s a kind of exchange — one that isn’t only about trading time for pay with the employer. The exchange can also be about helping a colleague being traded for social belonging. This exchange is also called the psychological contract. A contract that is often an unspoken agreement about how values are lived out, and what the consequence is if they’re broken (George, 2009). The psychological contract can have different parties. It can, for example, be between the employee and the organisation, between the employee and the leader, or between the employee and the team.

When a team draws up a Team Charter, mutual expectations are made visible and aligned.

Research shows that teams benefit greatly from having unambiguous discussions about the standards for their work and their work quality at the start of their teamwork (Sverdrup, 2015). These discussions are extremely important, because this is where the team’s psychological contract gets spoken — and so made clear — in the form of a Team Charter.

If the team doesn’t draw up a Team Charter, its psychological contract stays implicit. The psychological contract will always emerge over time, shaped by each colleague’s expectations or experiences from current or previous workplaces — and it’s very much about trust and fairness. And when the psychological contract is unspoken, it often first surfaces, as mentioned, when it’s broken. That is, when a team member feels a colleague hasn’t lived up to their obligations. The challenge with a broken psychological contract is that the employee experiences a sharp drop in their level of trust, happiness at work, engagement, helpfulness and sense of belonging to the team (George, 2009).

When I come across a team where the teamwork isn’t working, it can almost always be traced back to mistrust, because the psychological contract has been broken. Starting teamwork without a Team Charter is like gambling: you put a big stake on the table, but you risk losing it all on the floor. A psychological contract can be broken like a bolt from the blue, because expectations for the teamwork have never been put into words. If it’s a new team, it’s almost only a matter of time.

On the other hand — just as the research finds — I see that for the teams that go to the relatively small trouble of spending half a day completing their Team Charter, the members gain a higher level of awareness and become more conscientious about their teamwork. They align their expectations for the standards of their work and their work quality, and do far better than those whose agreements are implicit.

When I come across a team where the teamwork isn’t working, it can almost always be traced back to mistrust, because the psychological contract has been broken.

Finally, I find it’s a great help to the team when we get to talk about when to cut your colleagues some slack. One example of a bit of slack might be the question: must every deadline be met, and at any cost? That’s why I always recommend that the team talks about upper and lower limits for quality. It creates more tolerance in the teamwork.

Examples of an implicit psychological contract

Here are some examples of what a psychological contract can cover (Janssens, ‎2003):

Long-term commitment: You expect your leader not to disband your team straight away if the work goes badly
Clarity: You expect your leader to clearly describe your obligations to the organisation
Personal treatment: You expect that it’s not only the end result that counts, but your effort too
Diligence: You expect the team to keep its agreements even though circumstances have changed
Equal treatment: You expect your agreements to apply to everyone on the team

Maybe your expectations match those of your leader and your colleagues. Maybe they don’t. Your Team Charter puts that uncertainty right by making your psychological contract unambiguous.

Team Charter template

Here’s the Team Charter template I work from when I work with teams. The template is a minimum of what your Team Charter should contain. Different teams have different needs.

Remember that your psychological contract is dynamic and develops over time. So you should evaluate and update your Team Charter on an ongoing basis (Aaron, 2014).

Your Team Charter does the most good if it’s visible. So it’s a good idea to put it in a frame and hang it up in your regular meeting room.

Team Charter template
Mission*	Why the team exists What the team is to achieve
Vision**	A clear and precise description of the team’s ideal goal
Identity*	Members’ names Members’ contact details
Boundaries**	Authority What is the team allowed to do? Which decisions can the team make itself? Which decisions can the team implement itself?
	Tasks What is the team specifically responsible for? How does the team’s mission differ from other teams’? To what extent should we help members with personal problems that aren’t related to team activities?
	Identity Who is on the team, and who is not on the team? Who is at the core of the team, and who is not? What can we share with people who are outside the core?
	Political Which stakeholders are important? Who do we work for? What matters to these stakeholders?
Norms*	Chairing meetings Start the meeting on time Have an agenda — if possible, circulate it before the meeting Have a concrete outcome for the meeting If you can’t attend the meeting, tell the chair as early as possible. The responsibility for finding out what happened at the meeting is yours.
	Meeting behaviour Listen without interrupting Give the others room in the conversation Be open and honest
	Decision-making Clearly state the problems or the decisions that need to be made Define the solutions and options the team is facing At least half the team must be present to make a decision
	Communication plan What information does the team need? How does the team get this information? Who obtains the information?
	Conflict handling Acknowledge that there is a disagreement, and describe how it affects the team Get the people’s and/or the team’s approval to resolve the disagreement Let each party state their point of view Make sure each party proposes a solution, based on facts, mutual needs and the team’s goals Test the solution Evaluate the process
	Feedback* Give honest feedback What are the consequences for work that is late or of poor quality? How is the performance of the team and its members evaluated?
Team goals*	Describe the team’s goals
Measuring performance*	Describe how the team measures its progress
Signing the Team Charter**	The whole team signs the contract, thereby confirming that the agreement will be upheld The team must not sign until everyone agrees Those who can’t sign the contract shouldn’t be part of the team

*Hunsaker, 2011

**Aaron, 2014

It’s never too late to sow

It’s been known for many years that teams that get off to a good start enjoy a tailwind in their teamwork throughout the whole project (Gersick, 1988). That’s probably one of the reasons Professor Richard Hackman judged that a good start made up 30% of a team’s fate. But what if you haven’t prioritised this foundation from the start? If you haven’t sown these seeds, and now find yourselves knee-deep in misunderstandings, friction and conflict — is it then too late?

No. It’s never too late to synchronise your expectations for the teamwork. Let me illustrate with a question our instructor once asked us when I was taking lessons in skydiving: “How much time do you have to pull the cord to deploy the canopy on a jump from 1,500 metres?” The engineers reached for their calculators and started working out acceleration and free-fall speeds. Others grabbed paper and pencil and drew diagrams. Different answers came in. Some said 12 seconds. Others had calculated 18. Then the instructor replied: “You have the rest of your life to pull the cord. If the parachute doesn’t open and you’re only 10 metres from the ground, you keep pulling the cord.”

A Team Charter works the same way: ideally, it’s something you do at the start of your teamwork. If you haven’t done it, do it today.

Enjoy.

Sources

Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems

Hackman, 2011, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Laying the Foundation for Successful Team Performance Trajectories: The Roles of Team Charters and Performance Strategies

Mathieu, 2009, Journal of Applied Psychology

“Cut Me Some Slack”: The Psychological Contracts as a Foundation for Understanding Team Charters

Sverdrup, 2015, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

The Effects of a Team Charter on Student Team Behaviors

Aaron, 2014, Journal of Education for Business

Quality charters or quality members? A control theory perspective on team charters and team performance